The Cardinals lost Adam Wainwright for the season:
Sources: Expectation is that #STLCards’ Wainwright is done for season with Achilles injury. Has not yet undergone MRI.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) April 26, 2015
Wainwright left the game against the Brewers in the fifth inning with what originally was described by the team as a left ankle injury. The injury occurred when Wainwright slipped out of the batter’s box on a pop out. He hobbled off the field after the injury with the help of manager Mike Matheny.
“I was grabbing him. He was fighting me the whole time,” Matheny told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “I told him I just about grabbed him and fireman-carried him off the field.”
I suspect designated hitter proponents will use this to push for expansion of the rule. The Cardinals are lucky they have plenty of pitching depth. Michael Wacha, Carlos Martinez, and Lance Lynn combined to walk 17 and strike out 53 in 57 2/3 innings.
Chien-Ming Wang concurs.
Its like losing Mike Trout for the year because he pitched an inning in relief in a blow out. Its beyond dumb to risk your elite pitchers to injury doing stuff they are not trained to do well. Sure, NL teams save a bit of money by paying a RP’er or utility player instead of a DH, but they risk their valuable starters who become very expensive once they hit arbitration/free agency.
DH for ALL!
I understand the desire to avoid hurting these guys, and I’m no anti-DH diehard. But sweet merciful Elvis, how much damn training does it take to jog out of a batter’s box? The man gets paid millions of dollars a year to play a sport; I think we can expect a bare minimum of basic athleticism.
Scooter » I suppose it’s possible that this isn’t a batting injury. It happened in his left foot, which is his landing foot. I suppose all the stress of landing on that foot just brought the tendon to the breaking point. Maybe the stumble we see if due to the injury, not the cause. Many elderly people who break a hip think the break is a result of a fall, but in fact, most fall because the hip broke first.